Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's handling of the budget impasse reminds me of a guy who goes deer hunting with a shotgun.

You blast and blast away, but you don't hit anything.

His call to roll back workers' pay to minimum wage until the Legislature comes up with a budget - bad idea. His refusal to sign any bills until the budget is done - no big deal.

What Schwarzenegger needs to do is take the legislative leaders into a room and not let them out until they have something that at least looks like a budget. Next, put the budget up for a vote to see who is for it and who is against it. That's when you take out the gun and start sharpshooting votes one by one.

A promised judgeship here. A new DMV office there. A state park in this district. A bill signing there. A cut here, a tuck there, until you have lined up the eight or nine votes needed for a two-thirds majority.

And this talk about raising taxes up front - not smart at all. Taxes are a closer, not an opener. You don't put something that onerous on the table until the very last minute. You wait until everyone can see that what they want is within their grasp - and all they have to do is hold their noses and pull the trigger.

But instead, Arnold is just blasting away. He may scare up the forest, but it's not going to bag him any deer.

Michael Mina's new Clock Bar in the Westin St. Francis on Union Square is doing a gangbuster business.

It's a place where you can actually sit and have a conversation. Not like these new places with low-cut couches that are so far apart that you can't have a private talk.

I went in the other night, and everyone was talking - and none of it was in English or Chinese.

It's the same story at Bloomingdale's - packed and nobody speaking English.

Neiman Marcus - no English.

And nobody, but nobody, was speaking English in Prada.

It's all Italian, Dutch, French, German and heavy, heavy Russian.

The Europeans are absolutely the biggest retail customers these days downtown, and they are spending like crazy.

When it comes to the November supervisor sweepstakes, keep your eyes on Carmen Chu.

She's not very well known, but she could wind up being the next president of the Board of Supervisors.

I know that Ross Mirkarimi would like to be president, and the progressive crowd will do their best to keep someone like Chu - whom Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed - from getting it.

But if Chu can establish herself as her own person and get elected in the fall, she'd be a good bet as a compromise candidate, especially if Bevan Dufty can't put the votes together for the top job.

Plus, there's a good chance that two more Chinese American candidates could get elected - one out of the Richmond District, the other from North Beach-Chinatown.

That would put three Asians on the board. With those numbers, it would be very hard for the other supervisors to say no to a Chinese American woman like Chu taking the presidency.

The new Prada store at Union Square is something to see, but that white carpet in the showroom is not going to last - unless they start having people take off their shoes at the door.

Went to see "The Dark Knight" the other day. The lines are still halfway around the block.

The people sitting next to me were seeing it for the second and third time. It's like "Star Wars."

And am I the only one who thinks that the guy who plays Batman - Christian Bale - looks a little like Gavin Newsom?

But the real star is that cat Heath Ledger, who played the Joker - the most incredibly warped, corrupt, evil person alive.

Loved every minute of it.

The smartest thing Barack Obama has done in weeks was to go on vacation.

The guy was fast becoming a victim of his own celebrity and badly needed to get off the stage for a while.

The problem for Obama is that when you get to the perceived level of perfection that he is at, everyone expects new and innovative ideas on solving the nation's problems.

And he just doesn't have any ideas when it comes to something like gas prices.

Nobody does.

His suggestion - to keep your car engines tuned and tires pumped to increase gas mileage - may have been right, but to Middle America, it sounded way too much like Jerry Brown back in his "less is more" days.

And like Jerry, he was starting to look like some cat from outer space and in danger of becoming a joke.

Meanwhile, John McCain gains points by just sitting back and doing nothing. The difference is, people aren't expecting McCain to do anything.

They feel they know him, so he's got nothing to prove, nothing to promise and nothing to lose by being just another face in the crowd.

In fact, I dare you to pick him out of the crowd the next time you see him on TV. He's just part of the scenery.

I went on a tour of the new Millennium Tower the other day - what a view.

Going up the elevator, I noticed that there was no 13th floor, which is usual because many people think of 13 as being unlucky.

But there was no 44th floor, either.

It turns out that 44 is not considered a good number among Asians. So to make sure there are no bad vibes - or bad sales - they've eliminated the 44th floor as well.